Just came across this story in Scientific American about rumblings at the Yellowstone national park .. the site of a giant caldera or supervolcano !
Multiple tiny earthquakes rattle Yellowstone
Any disaster fiend will tell you that Yellowstone National Park is long overdue for a monster eruption that could leave as much as half the U.S. under a blanket of ash. And there are rumblings the big one could be imminent in the wake of a series of 30-plus mini-earthquakes in the park over the past few days—too weak to be felt by humans for the most part but picked up by the seismometers at the University of Utah.
After all, the geologic record shows that the giant caldera we affectionately call Yellowstone has blown every 600,000 years or so over the past 2 million years. The last big eruption? About 640,000 years ago when the park spit out about 240 cubic miles worth of rock, dirt, magma and other stuff.
But don’t panic yet. Although the earthquake swarm continues, according to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, the volcano alert level remains normal.
…………
Very interesting story indeed ! One may follow any significant developments from the University of Utah press releases on these events. Must be a tough balancing act for these folks to present their analysis, yet not panic the janata. For the data nuts, continuous raw seismographic data is available here. As i type this, there are few more rumbles of scale 3.0 or more, on Jan 2nd, all of them about 60km ESE of West Yellowstone, MT.
MAP 3.1 2009/01/02 13:15:39 44.528N 110.366W 3.4 MAP 3.2 2009/01/02 12:40:53 44.549N 110.370W 0.2 MAP 3.5 2009/01/02 11:32:49 44.549N 110.357W 5.4
If this thing erupts in full scale, we can kiss goodbye to current climate stability. Now that possibility kicked off the following thought process in me : Nature itself is in a dis-equilibrium, and through sheer randomness or some mechanical adjustments at the Earth’s core (or a random space debris hitting us, or some change in Sun’s activity) can cause serious climate change without any warning. But we poor homo-sapiens debate passionately on the morality of causing climate change, and how best to balance “development” goals with climate stability etc. Ofcourse, its very much arguable whether most of civilization’s economy is truly “development” we need at all, but still my sympathies are with humanity for having to deal with the question of climate stability while nature itself doesn’t guarantee stability one iota !
It would truly be ironic if humans, in order to “save nature”, promote alternative energy, completely get off fossil energy by 2060, stabilize co2 at 400 ppm … and then .. Bang ! Yellowstone goes off, completely altering the climate ! How tragic would that be ! ( No, iam absolutely not advocating inaction on climate issue, because any random natural event could always blow off a worthy human endeavor, but that’s never an excuse for inaction).
Whoever said life is fair 
